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Reviews
Hidden Hills (2013)
Cleaver, creative idea, stylishly realized.
A really clever, creative idea. Cleaver script. Stylishly realized. The film has wonderful art direction with attention to period details in sets, props, costumes, language, style, It is a stylistic homage to comedy film making of the early 1960's. It is a great approach to satirizing attitudes of the present gay world and present attitude to all relationships. The rather stilted dialog, so appropriate to the period is delivered with complete commitment by the excellent cast making the entire premise believable. It opens with a wonderful old fashioned title sequence with a fun vocal number. The entire talented company knows how to evoke the period, and at the same time comment on what is wrong with today's attitudes. It is so refreshing to see a gay themed film, which is not only a fine comedy but that also addresses issues and attitudes of all relationships in a film that really has universal appeal.
The Harvey Girl from Shanghai (2010)
An intriguing blend of glorious Technicolor and film noir nightmare
It's MGM meets the Mercury Players in this rediscovered and partially restored masterpiece. Long considered lost, this captivating collaboration of Orson Welles (at his most dementedly brilliant) and Judy Garland (in the days when she reigned supreme as the musical-comedy queen of the Metro lot) is an intriguing blend of glorious Technicolor and film noir nightmare (the vivid blood shed on display in a climactic scene is what film buffs might term "Minnelli red"). Only Helsinki Productions could resurrect the most important A.W.O.L. epic in Hollywood history and allow contemporary audiences a tantalizing glimpse at what might have been.
If you thought Faye Dunaway was a revelation channeling Miss Joan Crawford in Frank Perry's finest hour ("Mommie Dearest," don't you know...),get a load of wonderful Woolsey Ackerman as Miss Show Business. You'll be standing on your seat, shouting out "Encore!" - just like you were at the Palace in '51.
What other cinematic triumph can emerge from the depths of Louis B. Mayer's private vault and come complete with references to a musical version of "Madame Bovary," Lillian Hellman and all the beefsteak sandwiches you can eat? Not to mention a cameo by none other than Scott Michaels...Is it even more marvelous than "The Magnificent Ambersons"? More tune-packed than "Till The Clouds Roll By"? Pick up some popcorn, slip into your best Adrian-designed evening wear and give it up for "The Harvey Girl from Shanghai." It's like nothing you've ever experienced...while fully conscious.
- Mark Griffin, author of "A Hundred or More Hidden Things: The Life and Films of Vincente Minnelli" (Da Capo Press)